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Re: Extreme couponing

Yeah it is crazy a lot of times they get paid for some items that they buy. The news had a person from Cedar Rapids that did it. I can definitely see why they do it with our bad economy and they have gotten fired from their job. They also basically have their own store with how many goods they have in storage.

Re: Extreme couponing

I watched it and here's what I got from it:

-Be prepared to spend hours on clipping coupons and scouring websites to find deals
-You need to shop at a store that had double coupon days to double all your manufacturer coupons
-You need to shop at a store that has a discount club card
-You need to dedicate an entire day to shopping for groceries (most of the people were spending 5-6 hours in the store) because there are restrictions around the use of the club cards, and other in-store savings, so they have multiple purchases.
-You need to dedicate space in your house to all your bulk purchases, because these people don't buy just one or two, they buy lots. Family last week bought 56 cartons of yogurt at one time.
-Be prepared to buy a lot of stuff you may not use, because a lot of these people were buying stuff just because they have coupons for it.
-No coupon - no buy, not on sale - no buy.

When I watched it, one guy had purchased over 1000 tubes of toothpaste, someone bought 35 bottles of antacid, another couple had 48 bags of potato chips.

First off, all those health care items are dated and will expire, as is all the food. I don't know how a family of four will ever get through over 1000 tubes of toothpaste, or 35 bottles of antacid. Potato chips don't have a huge shelf life, so if you don't use them they will go stale. It would be interesting to know how much food and health care items they throw away because it goes out of date.

Quite honestly, it's hoarding, and some of these people IMHO have a sickness. The people last week had food stored in their master bedroom, their kids bedroom, and the bathroom. The guy with the toothpaste had an entire room dedicated for it.

Around DSM, you are not going to find a store that double coupons. Hy-Vee, Dahl's and Fareway don't double coupon, they don't have club cards, so you won't be able to take advantage of these in the DSM metro. I don't know how you would do it around DSM and save the kind of money these people save.

Re: Extreme couponing

Originally Posted by clonesalltheway

Yeah it is crazy a lot of times they get paid for some items that they buy. The news had a person from Cedar Rapids that did it. I can definitely see why they do it with our bad economy and they have gotten fired from their job. They also basically have their own store with how many goods they have in storage.

I was amazed stores were doing this. In the 15 years I worked retail grocery, we never did this, you would get the item for 0.00, but we would never pay you to buy an item. We would take the manufacturer coupon off first, then the store coupon would take the price to 0.00.

Re: Extreme couponing

My wife works part time at home and also cares for our 3 girls (5, 4 and 2 years old). She doesn't take it to this extreme, but with a couple hours of effort each week she is often able to save us $50 or so per week. We don't buy items we won't use, and we don't buy in so much bulk due to both the storage and spoilage issues. The five of us, with two dogs and two cats and a guinea pig, spend less per month on groceries than my inlaws do who are empty-nesters.

You can spend a lot of time and money picking out the perfect floral bouquet for your date ... but you're probably better off checking if you have bad breath and taking the porn out of the glove compartment.

The moral: you gain more by not being stupid, than you do by being smart. Smart gets neutralized by other smart people. Stupid does not.

Re: Extreme couponing

Originally Posted by Three4Cy

I was amazed stores were doing this. In the 15 years I worked retail grocery, we never did this, you would get the item for 0.00, but we would never pay you to buy an item. We would take the manufacturer coupon off first, then the store coupon would take the price to 0.00.

The couple times my wife has made this work, she was buying lots of other stuff. The "payment" was basically store credit towards the other items she was buying. Had she just been buying the single item, I doubt they would have given here cash. I believe she's done this at WalMart before.

You can spend a lot of time and money picking out the perfect floral bouquet for your date ... but you're probably better off checking if you have bad breath and taking the porn out of the glove compartment.

The moral: you gain more by not being stupid, than you do by being smart. Smart gets neutralized by other smart people. Stupid does not.

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